She Dreamed of Fire
by Angel Monroe
Summary: A colored look at season 2 and the summer before it. LoVe, angst, pyrotechnics. All the things I love. Oneshot.


**She Dreamed of Fire  
**by Angel Monroe

_Disclaimer: I gave my soul to God for the book I'm writing. I have nothing left to barter for Veronica Mars. In other words, unfortunately, I don't own it. _

_A/N: I've been reading a lot of one-shots and VM seems to be my new obsession. Here's the product. Hazy spoilers from all of season 2. LoVe pairing. Hope you enjoy. _

She dreamed of fire more often than not, waking sweat-soaked and over-heated. The SoCal heat wave was ill-timed and unmerciful, adding vivid imagery to dreams terrifying to begin with. Some nights were better than others, only soft whimpering and wet tears. Other nights she thrashed and screamed, imagining herself in a refrigerator tomb until her father came to chase the demons away. When a PCH biker blew a hole through Logan's backseat window, she dreamed of gunpowder instead of gasoline and didn't sleep for two days.

When her father was away, chasing fugitives instead, Logan would come and stay with her. Keith knew and looked the other way. He didn't want her to be alone. Logan would hold her while she slept, comfort her when she screamed. Worst were the nights when she turned in his arms and saw his father's face. She would scream and lash out, and then apologize over and over through trembling sobs. The rest of the night he would sleep on the couch, a mutual understanding that broke both their hearts.

They didn't sleep together, only just slept, and he never asked for or expected more. Night was never a time for pleasure, only pain. He understood.

The first time they made love was in the afternoon. He came into the apartment and found her coming out of a cold shower. At first he looked away, unsure, as she wrapped herself in a terry-cloth robe. She had the decency to look bashful, but the way she deepened his kiss belied any reservation. He boxed her in against the mattress, and for a moment she felt claustrophobic before he whispered her name and the most tender "I love you" she'd ever heard. Suddenly she could breathe again.

There was no fire in her dreams that night. Nor the next. Nor the next. When the heat-wave broke, so too did the hold night had on her. Soon she could sleep in his arms and not see Aaron's face. She could smile when she woke, and as long as her father was away, he never slept on the couch.

The night the city pool burned down, she could smell the gasoline and smoke on his skin. That night, the dreams returned with a vengeance and he couldn't chase them away with pretty words and "I love yous." He had brought them on and there was no fixing it this time.

When the truth came out about what he and his friends had done, she couldn't look at him for days. She listened to him knock on her door and couldn't make herself open it. Even after he apologized to her machine more times than she could count and she finally let him back in, she still imagined she could smell the smoke in his skin. Soon it wasn't just her own body she envisioned in that refrigerator; it was his as well.

She broke up with him on a Tuesday, having slept little over the weekend. While her father was away he had slept there as always, but the dreams were getting worse and his presence did more harm than good. She lost him in her dreams; she pushed him away when she woke. He'd commented offhandedly that he didn't know why he tried anymore. Might as well stake out the couch from the start and save her the trouble. She couldn't stand the anger she felt in him, though never directed at her until that Tuesday. She feared it would burn him from the inside out.

Months passed, and the dreams faded. She didn't wake screaming, overheated and afraid. She didn't need her father or Duncan to chase the demons away. Still, every time she looked into Logan's eyes, she could feel the fire. It hid itself inside him, and that was what she feared the most. Burning from the inside out.

And then that, too, began to fade. She saw warmth of another kind there, one that didn't burn. When she first saw him with Hannah, she hated him for it. Hated him for using the girl in the worst way possible, for using her to get to her father. She'd never thought him capable of it. But then she'd seen something in his eyes when he said he'd done something horrible, and she silently thanked the girl for causing the fire to die away. Even when Hannah disappeared, the warmth (that didn't burn) stayed in his eyes.

At Sadie Hawkins, she felt it in the way he held her.

At the AlternaProm, everything was laid out. He said he was sorry. He called them epic. His words laced around her like the fire in her dreams, and for the first time in a long time, it spread through her without searing. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to say that she loved him.

The bomb on the plane is what finally broke her. After all the dreams and all the pain, the fire in the sky was the last straw. She wept heavy tears, collapsing when she couldn't bear the weight of them. Cassidy's voice wound its way around her brain, and for a moment she didn't care if he killed her. But someone had to tell the truth. With her father's death, no one would be left to investigate hers.

It was Logan who saved her, and she knew it would be. He was all she had left.

That night she cried herself to sleep and dreamed of the fire again. Logan held her and wiped her tears away, whispered nonsense even he didn't believe, but he couldn't keep her awake and she knew the fire would be waiting.

In the dream, it consumed her whole world before Logan pulled her out of it, and all she wished was to go back in. There wasn't enough left without her father to make it worthwhile. Again she wished she'd died on the roof. And then her father came into the kitchen in the morning, and it felt like the rest of it was a dream instead. The pain, the hate, the fire she couldn't smother—it was all a dream and suddenly the world was enough again. Two men who loved her and a two-bedroom apartment—who could ask for more?

That night she dreamed of paradise.


End file.
